I've been keeping up with this thread for a while and really don't have anything useful to add besides my personal feelings. The job being my absolute favorite since Heavensward and having played it in savage then and now in Shadowbringers is probably the biggest difference in "fun" I have ever had with monk. I'm by far not the best monk out there but never ever was I so frustrated playing a job in savage before. It IS lackluster compared to many other jobs, it hasn't evolved, rather devolved in my opinion. While it was fun to manage GL in HW, it is now an absolute chore to play around the boss encounters, to get the last drop of dps from your mediocore rotation. I think the moment I realized how stupid GL is, was in E3S, having to spam form shift in downtime while trying to avoid laser beams. Why is it that everyone else is allowed to move freely and pay attention to what is going on but I have to spam this skill like an absolute madman in order to not lose my GL. Also cutscenes/QTE being a frequent annoyance lately is the absolute worst for me. Anatman becomes useless when you get pulled into that, you lose your stacks anyway. And then having skills like Tornado Kick and SSS, rarely being used at all. Another thing that annoys me is having to keep an eye on your TS buff which can easily get lost with any other status when you're raiding (i had to switch it off in the end to only have my buffs displayed thankfully). Please give me an bigger indication how long I have for the buff, it feels awful enough trying to Leaden Fist while TS buff runs out 0.01 seconds later. Having rng locked behind another layer of rng, I want to talk to the person who decided that such a thing would be enjoyable to anyone. Personal pet peeve is our highest potency skill being TK, that's truly an insult. I understand why it exists but it feels wrong having to build up GL just to lose it again for damage that's truly not worth it.
I love monk, I truly do. I want nothing more than to have it mean more than it is right now. I'm not an martial-arts kinda person, but the way they handled monk in the past was so much fun to play, I wish they would give it more love. Until then I'll quit raiding and just enjoy the game in another aspect, this is truly too painful for me.